Navy to Open SEALs to Women.

​Nearly two decades after GI Jane, a story about the first Female Navy SEAL operator, the United States Navy is officially opening its most famous, and infamous division to women.

According to the Navy Times:

The Navy is planning to open its elite SEAL teams to women who can pass the grueling training regimen, the service’s top officer said Tuesday in an exclusive interview.

Adm. Jon Greenert said he and the head of Naval Special Warfare Command, Rear Adm. Brian Losey, believe that if women can pass the legendary six-month Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, they should be allowed to serve.

“Why shouldn’t anybody who can meet these [standards] be accepted? And the answer is, there is no reason,” Greenert said Tuesday in an exclusive interview with Navy Times and its sister publication Defense News. “So we’re on a track to say, ‘Hey look, anybody who can meet the gender non-specific standards, then you can become a SEAL.'”

A key determinate in these arguments, as many are noting, is the line posed that says very clearly, “who can pass the grueling training regimen.” Those who have followed the story of Women in the Military and their acceptance in front-line combat operations over the last three years, as I have, know that even the victories which have been achieved have come at staggeringly high barriers to overcome. For example, the recent graduates of the Army Ranger School were military officers picked from the Academy to try for the school. The academies offer far higher physical fitness than is routinely demanded of most soldiers. Along with this fact, the two who graduated were of a collection of nineteen candidates who began the trials. Ranger training is extremely demanding, failing a full 55% of its male candidates. This is to also include the Marine Corps, first to attempt trials to allow women into the infantry, which only graduated its first female infantry troops in 2013. More noticeably, is the absence of even a single female officer to complete the notoriously physically difficult infantry officer course since the trials began following Secretary of Defense’s decision to rescind the 1994 direct-combat exclusion rule for women in January 2013.

What this means for the SEALs, we cannot know. Their INDOC and BUDS training is famous for being among the most terrifying in the world just to survive for even the most physically fit warfighters alive. What many of the previous trials which have shown for female infantry candidates so far, women are going to have a fight to succeed in the difficult training regimen. Regardless, this week has shown great strides towards making that a reality only envisioned in movies for the last two decades.